August 2009
65 posts
“His constant love-battle with his goblin-muse always leaves him stronger.”
—Mark Sinker on Mark E. Smith in The Wire, August 1986 (via fallingandlaughing)
July 2009
42 posts
“Depeche Mode may not be the most remarkably boring group ever to walk the face of the Earth, but they’re certainly in the running. Their sophisticated nonsense succeeds only in emphasising how hilariously unimaginative they really are.”
—Record Mirror, August 1981. Reviewer: Steven Patrick Morrissey. (via errorgorilla)
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Mark E pointed out as we prepped for our show last night in Warsaw (at a not so big club/venue called Stodoła) that these undersized dates are in effect being subsidized by U2’s world tour. The promoter of these dates, and of much of the U2 stadium tour, is Live Nation, the global conglomerate. A venue like Stodoła could not possibly afford to pay for us, the catering, or even their local crew given the relatively small number of tickets to be sold here — and it’s not even an “exclusive” VIP-type venue. It’s not like they can charge $200 a seat and make up their losses that way — this is a standing room club… with a floor made of plywood. So in order to book our date, they must (we figure) be losing money now, then making it up with what they expect to earn on the upcoming U2 stadium dates.
Those stadium shows may possibly be the most extravagant and expensive (production-wise) ever: $40 million to build the stage and, having done the math, we estimate 200 semi trucks crisscrossing Europe for the duration. It could be professional envy speaking here, but it sure looks like, well, overkill, and just a wee bit out of balance given all the starving people in Africa and all. Or maybe it’s the fact that we were booted off our Letterman spot so U2 could keep their exclusive week-long run that’s making me less than charitable? Take your pick — but thanks, guys!
” —David Byrne Journal: 07.14.09: Budapest (via bwall05)
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Guilty Displeasure
Another in a series of “Questions asked on Tumblr and Twitter”
What’s the best record you hated when you were 14?
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Gina X Performance - No G.D.M. 12” (1979)
Originally released in Germany and France in ‘79, “No G.D.M.” essentially pin points the origin of electroclash, decadently combining cold-wave electro, New York no wave, sleazy disco and the gender-bending performance aesthetics that would come to dominate the Berlin and NYC club scenes in the early 1980s. Gina X Performance was formed in Cologne, Germany by writer, producer, and musician Zeus B. Held and art school vocalist Gina Kikoine, whose detached, masculine lyrics were mostly often about her ideals of androgynous beauty and her desire to be a homosexual man rather than a lesbian. The lyrics of “No G.D.M.” are a musical response to celebrated writer and “stately homo” Quentin Crisp, who frequently spoke of a “great dark man” who was utterly beyond his reach. « notes from brainwashed.com »
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Pussy Galore - White Noise
Jon Spencer and co. craft one of the best songs ever in under a minute.
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Mike Baiardi - Where Is My Mind?
This is from Rockabye Baby: Lullaby Renditions Of The Pixies, which my friends Alex and Catherine very kindly sent my new baby as a present. I generally view these kind of things with suspicion, but I think this is rather well done, and also - unlike “Baby Mozart” etc - comes with no specious claims that this music will make yr baby’s brain grow! Thanks A & C!
(Some of the tracks work better than others - “Gigantic” and “Velouria” are a little too diffuse, and including “Ana” is surely a monster cheat as it would probably lull a baby just as well in its original version!)
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Paul Lansky - mild und leise
The English rock band Radiohead uses a sample from my very first computer piece, mild und leise, on one of the tracks on their CD, Kid A. (Yes, they very graciously asked permission, and I gave it. ) In fact, I really like what they did with the sample; it is quite imaginative and inventive. mild und leise was composed in 1973 on an IBM 360/91 mainframe computer. I used the Music360 computer language written by Barry Vercoe. This IBM mainframe was, as far as I know, the only computer on the Princeton University campus at the time. It had about one megabyte of memory, and cost hundreds of thousands of dollars (in addition to requiring a staff to run it around the clock). At that point we were actually using punch cards to communicate with the machine, and writing the output to a 1600 BPI digital tape which we then had to carry over to a lab in the basement of the engineering quadrangle in order to listen to it. Here is a photo of me in the lab a few years later. The piece came out on a Columbia/Odyssey LP in 1975 or so as a result of a contest run by the International Society for Contemporary Music (ISCM). It was called Electronic Music Winners (I’ve occasionally seen it for sale on Ebay), and Jonny Greenwood came across it in a used record shop when the band was on tour in the United States recently I think it sold about 7000 copies, which is a lot for a classical recording. (Kid A will sell that in the first 10 seconds of its release!)
Later:
What’s especially cute, and also occured to Jonny Greenwood, is that I was about his current age, when I wrote the piece—sort of a musical time warp.
The sampled part occurs in the first minute.
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Ruth - Polaroid Roman Photo 7” (1985)
Another superb track from the French synth wave compilation BIPPP, the wonderfully melancholic “Polaroid Roman Photo” was originally released in extremely limited edition of only 80 copies and features a distinct synthetic sound of violins and horn flourishes accompanied by two female vocals, one that is both warm and sensual, and another that is cold and robotic. Ruth was formed by avant-garde musician Thierry Müller, who had previously recorded strange textural music as Ilitch, along with synth player Philippe Doray of Associaux Associés, yet another source of incredible, obscure and totally out there electronic sounds from the early French synth wave era.
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“I get letters from people expressing their outrage that they heard the music of The Stooges, The Ramones, The Buzzcocks, or The Fall in an ad and I understand their anger and sense of loss as they figure yet another one of their well-kept secrets has just become part of the corporate structure and the band is nothing more than the lap dogs of the man, the very man they were supposed to be sticking it to in every waking moment. These bands are not being co-opted or selling out at all. Selling out is when you make the record you are told to make instead of the one you want to make. I wonder if it ever occurred to these people that the reason the music of these interesting and alternative bands is being recruited is because their fans are now the ones calling the shots. In other words, we have arrived! Of course the ad is trying to sell you something and by using a band you like, attempting to gain your confidence by exploiting the band’s integrity for a commercial end. So what? You’re not a fuckin’ moron are ya? You see through that, don’t ya? What would you rather hear, Iggy and The Teddybears doing “I’m A Punk Rocker” in a car ad or enduring some generic background music? I thought so. Do you have any idea what some of these bands went through to make that music? The fact that there might be some money for them all these years later is great. You think that paycheck is in any way a slight to their integrity? Are you fucking kidding me? Pay them. Pay them double. Pay them now. It’s about fuckin’ time.”
—Henry Rollins (UPDATE: Why read when you could listen to Henry yell at you?) (via ericmortensen)
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Bastro - I Come From a Long Line of Shipbuilders [Sing the Troubled Beast, 1990]
pgwp:
The legacy of Bastro is muddled at best. In one sense they’re pioneers of math rock—I can’t really think of another band that was doing that dense-but-syncopated, propulsive blast. Sort of like if Sonic Youth and the Minutemen had melded into a single band. Yet on the other hand they seem forgotten, passed over. No one’s clamoring for a Bastro reunion at the next Pitchfork Fest. David Grubbs went on to Gastr del Sol and John McEntire to Tortoise—two groups so far removed from “rock” that Bastro retroactively became kinda quaint, as if they were a specimen of a previous era, even though that era had actually yet to come into full bloom.
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“I’m not sure how many ‘old hardcore dudes’ really understand how much influence they had, so this sentiment has some oomph to it. I know what she means, and it can be truly annoying. That being said, DIY, punk rock and — yes — hardcore paved the way for so much more than music, and those folks do indeed deserve a lot of credit for first refusing neo-classical economic models of sustenance. Punk capitalism, you know? Ask the failing record industry, the flailing print industry, the radio world in a coma, the American lifestyle run ragged by debt and over-indulgence, etc. Ask them how much DIY culture has affected their lives. Or read The Pirate’s Dilemma. Then make fun of Jesus Lizard.”
—Missing It | flux-rad.com (via pgwp)
I am doing a list of the top 50 songs of the 80’s. Just so I don’t miss any, please name one song you would want to see included or considered. It need not be number one—any song you think I should consider is fine. [?]
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Post Punk Submissions →
postpunk.tumblr.com
Feel free to submit links, videos, quotes, and photos. Hell, if you made a sweet post on your site that I should reblog, drop the link.
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Was (Not Was) - Oh, Mr. Friction
A conversational piece by the well-known dinosaur walkers mutant disco mutants. Thanks to Musicophilia’s 1981 series.
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The Soft Pack - Grinding Halt (Cure cover)
No fancy tricks, just a really solid cover.
I’ve had this song stuck in my head.
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Michael Jackson - Billie Jean (1981 demo)
"Glass"
tomewing asks:
Has there ever been a bad song with the word “Glass” in the title?
The worst I have in my collection is “Spying Glass” by Massive Attack. How about everyone else?
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